Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer & James Crews - Living Your Poetry Series

[laughs] Am I talking? Am I reading? Let me just read a poem.

Oh, good.

Um, so, uh, this is from my new book that'll be out in a couple weeks, The Sacred Every Day: Um, Poems of Peace and Stillness, which feels like a stretch in these times, but, um, but it's aspirational for sure.

And, um, you know, I, I'm starting with this one.

It's called Pledge of Allegiance.

I think as a poet you make a pledge of allegiance to the world as it is, as you are able to meet it, and whether that means the beauty, the anger, the grief, the whole thing.

And so Pledge of Allegiance: I pledge allegiance to the drop of snow melt balanced on the petals of a dandelion, and to the bead of weak sunlight held in its center like an all-seeing eye staring out.

I pledge allegiance to the patch of blue sky showing where quilted clouds have torn themselves apart to reveal the promise waiting beneath.

I pledge alliance.

I pledge allegiance to the porcupine with a white spike of quills around his tender face, feeding on wild flowers as we feast on every scrap of beauty that comes our way each morning.

So you saw I had a Freudian slip there, "I pledge alliance." This, this poem was actually written from a poem by the singer, songwriter, and poet Carrie Newcomer.

Uh, it's called What Makes Sense.

It's a beautiful poem, and she has this repeating line of, "I pledge alliance." Well, we're so conditioned, in the US anyway, to s- to say and think, "I pledge allegiance," and that is where my mind went.

I totally blew past alliance.

However, so I invite myself and all of you to think, and I've written many pledge of alliance poems since then, um, to think about what it means to pledge alliance to something, and I really do feel an alliance with the porcupine, um, that I mention in the poem and, and everything else.

I think that's, that is the larger sense of what it means to live your poetry is that you are not divided from anything.

You are actually in cooperation and connected with the world and acting from that space.

Hopefully, aspirationally, you're not gonna feel it every day, but often you can turn to poetry to others who have done it or to the writing of poetry itself, I think, to move you into that space.

That's the way it works for me anyway.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, what I notice about that poem, James, is just how much it seems like it's in, like it's...

I, I pledge allegiance.

What does that even mean? It means I'm, I give you my attention.

I give you my time.

[laughs] Am I talking? Am I reading? Let me just read a poem.

Oh, good.

Um, so, uh, this is from my new book that'll be out in a couple weeks, The Sacred Every Day: Um, Poems of Peace and Stillness, which feels like a stretch in these times, but, um, but it's aspirational for sure.

And, um, you know, I, I'm starting with this one.

It's called Pledge of Allegiance.

I think as a poet you make a pledge of allegiance to the world as it is, as you are able to meet it, and whether that means the beauty, the anger, the grief, the whole thing.

And so Pledge of Allegiance: I pledge allegiance to the drop of snow melt balanced on the petals of a dandelion, and to the bead of weak sunlight held in its center like an all-seeing eye staring out.

I pledge allegiance to the patch of blue sky showing where quilted clouds have torn themselves apart to reveal the promise waiting beneath.

I pledge alliance.

I pledge allegiance to the porcupine with a white spike of quills around his tender face, feeding on wild flowers as we feast on every scrap of beauty that comes our way each morning.

So you saw I had a Freudian slip there, "I pledge alliance." This, this poem was actually written from a poem by the singer, songwriter, and poet Carrie Newcomer.

Uh, it's called What Makes Sense.

It's a beautiful poem, and she has this repeating line of, "I pledge alliance." Well, we're so conditioned, in the US anyway, to s- to say and think, "I pledge allegiance," and that is where my mind went.

I totally blew past alliance.

However, so I invite myself and all of you to think, and I've written many pledge of alliance poems since then, um, to think about what it means to pledge alliance to something, and I really do feel an alliance with the porcupine, um, that I mention in the poem and, and everything else.

I think that's, that is the larger sense of what it means to live your poetry is that you are not divided from anything.

You are actually in cooperation and connected with the world and acting from that space.

Hopefully, aspirationally, you're not gonna feel it every day, but often you can turn to poetry to others who have done it or to the writing of poetry itself, I think, to move you into that space.

That's the way it works for me anyway.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, what I notice about that poem, James, is just how much it seems like it's in, like it's...

I, I pledge allegiance.

What does that even mean? It means I'm, I give you my attention.

I give you my time.